


Keep You in My Dreams

by briizy



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:52:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8146487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/briizy/pseuds/briizy
Summary: Kent Parson has never met his soulmate. He also really, really doesn't want to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from Blue October's "18th Floor Balcony."  
> my tumblr  
> feel free to prompt me there, if you'd like!

Kent is barely seven years old when he is first made aware of what his soulmark really means.

“Wow, you fight your soulmate?” Sara asks him, eyes wide. “That’s so sad.” Kent tilts his head in confusion. Sara rolls her eyes, muttering under her breath about stupid boys. “Your soulmate says they’re gonna hit you, Kent!” Her voice is too loud in the elementary classroom, attracting the attention of both the teacher and his nearby classmates.

“Sara, you know it’s rude to point out other people’s marks!” The teacher scolds, shooing away the kids that gather to inspect his forearm. She sends them over to get their lunches and kneels down next to Kent, who looks up at her with a trembling lower lip.

“That’s not true, right Ms. Thatcher?” he asks. “My soulmate has to like me!” She sighs and smooths a hand over his messy blonde hair.

“Kent, soulmates work in weird ways, sometimes. I’m sure everything will be just fine.” Ms. Thatcher offers him a small smile, but, even at seven, Kent knows pity when he sees it. He nods and goes back to his macaroni artwork, determinedly ignoring the stinging behind his eyes.

He asks his mom for a cover sleeve the minute he gets home.

* * *

 When Kent decides to legitimately pursue hockey as a long-time career, he begins to avoid the more physical aspect of the game as much as he can. He’s terrified of hearing those hateful words spit out at him from across the ice. Hockey doesn’t make it easy for him, since it’s one of the most aggressive games around, but he tries. He avoids fights and dishing out huge checks if he can.

Instead, he focuses on building his speed, his puck-handling, becoming skilled with his hands and feet to draw himself and the puck out of the way of rushing defensemen. Kent makes his hands too valuable to be used for fighting. He gets just as angry and frustrated as his teammates do, but Kent takes them out on the scoreboard instead of in a scrum. He works and works, gets better and better, until he’s considered one of the best.

On the cusp of turning sixteen, he’s picked up in the QMJHL draft; he grins too hard as he shakes the managers’ hands and poses for a photo. He’s lead back behind a curtain, only to run smack dab into a solid chest.

“Oh, sorry!” he says automatically.

“It’s alright,” a quiet voice responds, faintly accented. Kent looks up to meet bright, bright blue eyes. _Oh_.

“Ah! Kent, I’d like you to meet Jack Zimmermann,” the man behind him says, as if Kent didn’t recognize the guy before him. Zimmermann had been tearing up the midget hockey leagues these past few years; Kent had read enough articles, had thought about what would happen if they were selected by the same team. Now, he gets to find out.

“Nice to meet you,” Kent says, sticking out a hand to shake. Jack takes it and smiles at him, and Kent can’t help but to grin back.

* * *

 Jack lets out a quiet sigh from the other side of the hotel room as Kent lays back on the bed. He cracks an eye open and asks, “You alright, Zimms?”

“. . . do you ever think about your soulmark?” Kent lets out a startled laugh.

“Uh, I try not to.”

“Really?” Jack sounds surprised.

“It’s not exactly positive.”

“. . . I don’t know what mine is.” Kent stops twirling his hoodie string around his finger and sits up, facing Jack.

“You don’t know what it says?”

“No, it’s just kind of ambiguous.”

“Oh.” They sit in silence for a minute.

“Can I— “ 

“What does—” They interrupt each other and stop abruptly.

“You first,” Jack says.

“What does yours say?” Kent asks hesitantly. “Don’t answer that if you don’t want to, I was just . . . trying to help, I guess.” Jack shoots him a small smile. He shakes his head and rolls up his sleeve, pulling off the guard on his forearm. He walks forward to sit on the bed next to Kent, who leans forward to read the mark.

_Oh, Lord._

“Huh,” Kent says. “Well, I see what you mean. It’s either ‘oh, Lord, that guy is incredibly attractive’ or ‘oh, Lord, that guy is that asshole NHL player’.” Jack slaps him on the shoulder.

“Shut up, Kenny! Don’t jinx it.” He’s grinning as he says it, though, so Kent just laughs.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Jack. You’re not so bad.”

“Thanks, bud,” Jack says drily.

“Anytime.”

“Can I see yours now?” Kent looks him over.

“Fair is fair, I guess.” He’s a little apprehensive as he peels off the cover sleeve, revealing the winter-pale skin of his left forearm.

“. . . what—is that _Russian_?” Kent huffs out a laugh.

“Yup.”

“What does it say?”

“Essentially, ‘oh, you fucking asshole.’” He ducks his head. Jack curls a hand around his wrist, careful not to touch the mark.

“Kenny . . .” Jack trails off.

“Don’t worry about it, Zimms. I’ve come to terms with it.”

“But soulmates—”

“I know.” Jack frowns at him. When Kent gives a self-depricating shrug, his eyes soften and he scooches up the bed to wrap an arm around Kent and pull him down to his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Kent can feel that familiar sting in his eyes, so he buries his head in Jack’s soft t-shirt, taking comfort from his warmth. Jack gently cards a hand through his hair in wordless response. “It’s alright, Kenny,” he hushes, knocking off his shoes to shift them both down the bed until his head is on a pillow. Kent’s shoulders shake minutely as he takes a short, sharp inhale. Jack just pulls him closer, rubbing his back until his pulse evens out and his breathing slows.

* * *

 In a weird, twisted way, Kent likes playing against the Falconers. He feels that bitter, angry part of him surface, the tiny part that still hates Jack for locking him out time and time again. It aches when he sees Jack’s familiar face across the ice, seeing his name stamped across the back of a jersey opposite him. It hurts even more when Kent watches that jersey blow by him like he’s nothing in the dying minute of the third period, left far behind and forgotten. Again.

Kent hears the cheering of the arena as Jack fires the puck into the Aces’ goal, the whooped celebrations of the Falconers, and turns to see his teammates. Their heads are down, shoulders slightly slumped; Kent can feel his gaze get hard.

“Hey! We’re not done yet, boys,” he yells. They look up and see the steel in his eyes. “We’re not rolling over that easy!” He skates among them, brows drawn down, waiting for the linesman to set up. The teams set up across each other at center ice.

The referee drops the puck.

Swoops wins the face-off and sends it back to Taddy, who fires it in for a spin-cycle. Kent chases after it, chest low and head up, watching for approaching defenseman. He spots Jonesy on the blue line, holding the Falconers in as the seconds tick down. Kent flings a pass back to him and crashes the net as Jonesy lets go of a wicked slapshot; the goalie can’t handle it, serving up a juicy rebound. Kent goes flying in, seeing only the barest glimpse of black on white, and pokes out his stick, fully extended.

Everything gets muffled as a pile of players folds over him. He can hear the roar of the crowd and the swearing of the men above him but he’s flat against the ice, unsure of whether or not the puck crossed the line or not. The mass grappling around him clears a little as players pair off to scrabble at each other.

Kent sees daylight out of the corner of his eye and crawls towards it, losing his helmet somewhere in the process. He’s almost made it when a huge hand comes curling down and grabs a hold of his collar, pulling him out of the pile. He looks up to see Alexei Mashkov’s fuming expression inches from his own.

“Ох Кровавый мудак! You liking hit like that so much?? Huh? I can hit, too!”

The words echo in his ears.

And Kent . . . Kent can’t breathe. Ice runs through his veins and pulses further in his body with every slow, shocked beat of his heart. He shivers violently and scrambles away from Mashkov, yanking his sweater collar from his grip, and skates away, head down.

“Hey, Parson!” he hears behind him. Kent flinches and speeds up, reaching the safety of his team’s bench.

“You okay, Parser?” Swoops asks, taking in Kent’s abnormally pale complexion, his dark brows furrowed in concern. Kent nods but doesn’t look up, opting to busy himself with a bottle under the bench, fumbling it as his hands shake. Distantly, he hears the echoing of the arena die down as the head referee skates toward center ice.

“After video review, the call on the ice stands. Aces goal.” Boos erupt from the crowd as the ref points toward center ice. “Two seconds will be added to the clock.” Kent feels his teammates throw arms around him and cheer, rocking side to side with the force of their celebration, but all he can think of is Mashkov’s venomous expression and angry words raining down on him as he dangled like a bedraggled kitten from the Falconer’s heavy grip. He thought he had forced every last bit of hope for a relationship with his soulmate out of his head, but there’s a small part of him that’s crying out, saying _he hates me, he’ll never love me, I’ll never be loved_.

Swoops lightly smacks the back of his helmet, startling him out of his thoughts. His teammate frowns at him.

“Kent, are you sure you’re alright?” Kent shakes himself out of his stupor and musters up a smirk.

“They call me Clutch for a reason, baby,” he quips. Swoops squints his eyes but nudges his shoulder, leaning on him for a second.

“If you’re sure, man.”

They both turn as Coach starts yelling behind them, a reminder that there are still two seconds left to play before they can head off the ice. Swoops is sent over the boards and Kent looks out over the ice, smirk still frozen in place. He locks eyes with Zimmermann as he skates by the Aces bench. Zimms stares at him as he passes, and Kent can feel his heart crack just that much more.

* * *

 It takes a while for Kent to get out of the media scrum and into the quiet halls of the Dunkin Donuts Center, abandoned by the time he finishes his shower and gets dressed. He has his hands in his pockets and head down as he walks, essentially on auto-pilot. Unfortunately for Kent, his auto-pilot appears to be broken, because he finds himself in the unknown depths of the arena. He’s peering around, looking for some signage to lead him out when he hears echoing footsteps coming from his right. Turning to ask for some advice, he comes face to face with Alexei Mashkov for the second time that night.

His warm expression turns stormy as he recognizes Kent, brown eyes darkening as he snarls, “Parson. What you doing here still?” He continues on without taking a breath. “You not do enough already, with hitting Snowy?” Kent stiffens and turns away in the direction he had come.

He’s determined not to say anything; the second he does, Mashkov will _know_. If he knows, he’ll get angry again and Kent can already feel the ache in his chest as he imagines his soulmate, _his soulmate_ , with that disgusted expression back on his face as he turns away from Kent, leaving, leaving, _leaving_.

Mashkov apparently isn’t done with him, clearly still upset about the game. He follows Kent from a short distance, saying “People get hurt in pile, you know? Not fair to them you such a _rat_.” His Russian accent gets thicker the angrier he gets.

Kent looks forward and tries to disguise his flinch. This is exactly what he was expecting when he met his mate, but his imagination can’t compare to this terrible, terrible reality, his soul cringing with every word out of Mashkov’s mouth. He almost wants to say something, just so he can get the rejection over with. So he can move on, if such a thing is possible. Most literature says a rejected soulbond is one of the worst sensations a person can feel; Kent doesn’t think anything could be worse than what he’s experiencing now, the culmination of every nightmare and anxious panic happening here in the basement of a hockey rink.

“Parson, I _talking_ to you—” Kent hears him get closer and is twisted around as Mashkov grips his bicep, spinning him around.

“Don’t _fucking_ touch me!” Kent shouts, backpedaling quickly as he twists his arm away. He squeezes his eyes shut as he stumbles into the other side of the hallway, anticipating Mashkov’s famous right hook. It takes a few seconds for Kent to realize he hasn’t been punched yet. He blinks open his eyes cautiously to see the most devastated expression he’s ever seen—plastered across the face of his soulmate.

* * *

 A young Alexei rubs a palm over his soulmark, brow furrowed.

“ _Mama, what does that say?”_

“ _It is in English, Alyosha. Your soulmate must not be Russian_.

“ _Oh._ ” Alexei frowns down at his mark, thumbing the soft curves of the letters. “ _I will love them anyway,”_ he says determinedly.

When he gets older, he begins to think about playing in the NHL; even the mention of the league sends a shiver of anticipation down his spine. He decides that learning English is a good idea whether or not he ends up in the NHL. The first thing he does is look up what his soulmark says. He drops his translation dictionary once he figures it out.

 _Don’t fucking touch me_.

Alexei worries for a few days over this discovery. What could he possibly to do his soulmate to cause that kind of reaction? Maybe he doesn’t have the first set of words, he thinks. Maybe his soulmate is just having a bad day or something when they meet. Regardless, Alexei decides to ramp up his generally positive personality. That way, he can make his soulmate feel better the second they meet!

Years later, he’s settled in with the Providence Falconers of the NHL. His English is . . . well, it’s pretty good given the fact that he kind of gave up on learning the language once he discovered the ridiculous number of rules that don’t actually work as set rules half of the time. Alexei garners himself a reputation among the locals as a terrifying, aggressive Russian bear on the ice and a caring, cuddly teddy bear off of it.

He doesn’t forget his soulmate; he kisses his mark before he steps out on the ice every game, a reminder that there’s someone out there who needs him.

Tonight, Alexei hears his words in the basement hallways of the Falconers’ arena. He stares in disbelief as his _soulmate_ cowers in front of him, body curled around to protect himself from – from _Alexei_ , oh God.

* * *

 Mashkov looks _horrified_ , eyes wide and brows drawn together as his mouth opens slightly.

“ _You_ ,” he breathes. He takes a step forward, hand reaching out. He stutters to a stop as Kent flinches back.

“Don’t, please, just don’t . . .” Kent trails off, hating himself for how weak he sounds. He looks over at Mashkov, watches as his face crumples in on itself.

“Kent Parson. I been waiting for you,” he says, clearly wanting to get closer. Kent gives a wet laugh.

“You’ve been waiting for your soulmate, okay, not–” He shakes his head. “Not me.” He slides down the wall like the strings holding him up have been cut. He thunks his head down on his knees and wraps his arms around himself as he takes a deep breath. He hears the rustling of Mashkov’s clothing as he shifts.

“You, soulmate, they are same, yes?” Mashkov asks hesitantly.

“If you want to be technical, yes,” Kent replies, muffled slightly by his suit jacket.

“Then why—”

“Look at my mark, Mashkov!” Kent explodes, tearing off his jacket and rolling up his sleeve. “Does this look like someone likes me, huh? Just because you know I’m your soulmate now, that means you, what, _love_ me now?” He scoffs. “Sure, I’m buying it.” He won’t look Mashkov in the eye as he thrusts out his arm for him to see.

Mashkov cautiously leans forward, checking to see if Kent will storm away again, tilting his head to read the script on his arm. His eyes widen as he gets further along in the quote. Wincing, he leans back against the wall again. Slowly, he slides down the cinderblocks until he’s mirroring Kent.

“When I am little, Mama tell me a story about soulmarks,” he begins quietly. “She say that the moment you meet soulmate tells best things about people. When I read this—” he gestures to his forearm. “—I think I make their day better, not worse. I don’t think _I_ cause soulmate to be upset.” He frowns. “Sorry, Kent Parson. Did not mean to hurt you.” Kent sniffs and rubs a hand under his eyes. He slowly looks up and meets Mashkov’s earnest gaze.

“I never wanted to meet my soulmate,” he confesses. Mashkov grimaces at his words, but makes no other movement. “What loving relationship starts with a literal fight? I avoided physical stuff as much as I could, but . . .” he shrugs. “You’re a hockey player, you know how it is. You do what you need to win.” Mashkov nods at this, eyes still pleading. Kent almost quirks a smile at the sight: a 6’4” muscled guy squished up against a wall, knees nearly jammed up his nostrils. He shakes his head and looks back down at his knees. “I’m sorry it had to be me, Mashkov.”

“ _No!_ ” Kent startles as Mashkov jolts forward. “No, Kent. I am sorry. I am glad you are my soulmate.” Kent can feel the tears beginning to well up in his eyes as he continues. “You call me Alexei, or Tater, if want. I want to know you. I already know little things about you, but.” He shrugs. “I know you love your kitty. I know you hard-working, funny . . .” he pauses, grinning a little. “Beautiful, too.” The tops of his cheeks turn a little red.

Kent finally huffs out a wet laugh, giving him a tremulous smile. He can feel the first of the tears streak down his cheeks. Mash— _Alexei’s_ eyes go wide again as Kent takes in a shuddering breath, shoulders shaking slightly with the release of tension.

Kent is just tired of holding it all back; it’s been years of dreading this moment, of the teasing and worrying, and to go from hearing his worst fears confirmed to having his soulmate tell him he’s beautiful, it’s . . . a lot to deal with. So, he cries. Full-body, chest wracking sobs begin to pour out of him as he lets everything out for the first time in . . . well, ever. He hears Alexei make a startled, concerned noise across from him. He scrambles closer and hovers over Kent, hand slightly above his shoulder, clearly wanting to touch him.

Kent turns and presses his face into Alexei’s chest, taking comfort from his warmth. Immediately, long arms wrap around him and pull him forward until he’s straddling Alexei’s lap, hands curled tight into his shirt. He can feel the vibrations through the chest under his cheek as Alexei shushes him and runs a hand repeatedly through his hair.

“I have you. I have you,” he keeps repeating. A mix of Russian and English fills the air as Kent quiets down, lulled by Alexei’s surprisingly soothing presence. He’s worn out by the emotional release, almost asleep, by the time he remembers who exactly it is he’s sitting on. He leans back and looks into Alexei’s warm brown eyes.

“Um, thank you,” he says, blushing. “This isn’t exactly the meetings your mom told you about, huh.”

“No,” Alexei replies, “but I love it anyway.” He lifts his hand from Kent’s shoulder blade and reaches up to cup his jaw, rubbing his thumb across his cheekbone to wipe away the last of the tears. He drops his huge hands to curl around Kent’s waist, holding him up. Kent searches his face and only finds concern and compassion; he releases the last of the fear in his soul and tilts forward slightly. Alexei’s eyes go wide. “Kent—”

Kent presses a soft kiss to the top of Alexei’s cheekbone, hand cupping the other side of his face. He nuzzles his nose into Alexei’s and keeps his eyes closed, foreheads pressed together.

“Thank you for not hating me,” he says quietly, and the vulnerability in his voice breaks Alexei’s heart.

“Never,” Alexei whispers back. “Couldn’t.” Kent hums in response and shifts again, dropping a gentle kiss to Alexei’s lips before he pulls back. He raises an eyebrow and smiles at Alexei’s dumb-founded expression.

“What?” Alexei just hugs him closer, tucking Kent’s face into the join of his neck and shoulder as he cards one hand through his hair. And Kent . . . Kent can breathe again.


End file.
